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World Travel Market day two – random musings

Slovenia has announced a new cross border initiative with an Italian and an Austrian region. It seems a but strange to have a country teaming up with regions… Did the whole of Austria and Italy not want to join the playingtogether.com campaign where Slovenia is joined by Italy’s Fruilli Venezia Giulia region and Austria’s Carinthia www.playingtogether.com

I interviewed Dubai’s tourism director for the UK and Ireland Ian Scott and he put up a fiery defence of recent attacks on the Emirate. With regard to the infamous sex on the beach case he said: ‘We have 1million Brits coming here a year if you include cruise passengers. You can’t expect them all to be trouble free visits. It’s a bit like the X Factor, everyone is going to have an opinion.’

TUI’s CEO Dermot Blastland was as entertaining as ever at a seminar on what travel will be like in 2023. After jokingly admitting he was getting cabin crew to drop pounds in an effort to cut down flight weights and hence fuel costs he said it is likely the package giant will stop working with hotels that don’t meet certain environmental targets.

How come so many celebs turn up to the show but no one gets told about them? Apparently, Michael Caine and Dannii Minogue were floating round on a couple of the stand but no one seemed to know any details.

I really enjoyed another night of not going to random events but learning more about social media at travelblogcamp (www.travelblogcamp.co.uk) organised by consumer blog www.travel-rants.com. While it felt a little like crashing the school chess club thanks to other people’s vaster knowledge of the nerdier side of travel, there were some interesting points made… If there was one thing I was surprised by it was that those who were not corporate bloggers were looking at ways of monetising their blogs. Does no one do it for the love of it? A vow from me? I may try and make money elsewhere on the net but you will never see ads or affiliates on worldofjames.com